


And So On

by Partnachklamm



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Jealousy, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26655166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Partnachklamm/pseuds/Partnachklamm
Summary: It is the first and last time Ushijima doubts himself.
Relationships: Sugawara Koushi/Ushijima Wakatoshi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	And So On

It starts a little past midnight, which Sugawara knew not from sleepy lids flicking to the clock on the stand but by knowing that Ushijima is, not quite admittedly but predictably, a bit twee when it came to these sort of things.

And, so he hums at the mouthing felt at the back of his neck and sighs accordingly as a hot palm slides down his briefs and rubs along his cock. 

He smiles in the dark, growing half mast. “It’s a bit early.”

Teeth nip at the skin behind his ear. Steady huffs ruffle fine hairs. “No. Just on time.”

He lets his shoulders be pulled back, Ushijima much too awake in comparison to Sugawara’s slower reflexes. Blankets shift and disappear, not really needed in the building heat to accompany hot skin pressing and pinched at his hips. In the black, he could still feel those golden eyes on his neck.

With the warmth of the sun on his nose, he wonders how he found himself in such peace.

Sugawara feels fingers brush his knuckles and he jumps, ready to pull back and softly sputter an apology at the unintended touch. But he realizes in that same breadth of pause that, in a first, Ushijima initiated it, at a table by the window in a cafe that smelled not too sweet, and that the fingers that now tapped on his skin were meant to be, as always, as sure as dusk and dawn. 

All he can hear is his pulse hammering behind his ears. 

He tucks back grey flyaways behind his ears, free hand trembling just slightly. 

He dares a glance up. Ushijima, despite the soft hold on his hand, sits somehow more still than Sugawara had ever seen him. There’s a tight set to his eyebrows, and a jut to his jaw that pulls a vein crawling under his neck. Sugawara begins to realize the soft taps on the back of his palm are more arrhythmic than calming. A slight sheen has formed along Ushijima’s temple. 

Sugawara shifts his hand under Ushijima’s. “Are you okay—”

“I’ll be back.” The table jolts from hefted thighs grazing along the edge, Ushijima having now sauntered much far off by the time Sugawara has caught their cups from clattering off their saucers. 

Something strange is going on, Sugawara thinks in the least. He wonders if the intimacy was a step too far for him, a test of holding his breath to the point of fainting. That towering bulk of meat hadn’t a tendency to push himself beyond the limits that his body had yet to manifest but instead was always aware of the strains in his muscles, just considerate enough of growth through trial and error and practice. Sugawara wonders if, in a rarity that he had never seen, the same could not occur for him emotionally. 

There’s a humming that pulls him from his thoughts. Ushijima’s phone, buzzing towards the edge, topples to the floor before Sugawara could stumble to grab it. 

Sugawara sighs and crouches off his seat. It’s Oikawa, he notices as he picks it up, and chews on a grimace. The decision to answer is leaving him with each vibration— too much enjoying the monotony of the day to indulge in predetermined dramatics but too considerate of Ushijima to not want to hand him the same fate. By the time Sugawara decides to answer, the buzzing stops.

He’ll write him a message back. _Sorry, he’s fallen into the toilet,_ is on the tip of his fingers already as he unlocks the phone and finds his contact in the messages. 

Sugawara stops.

There’s this moment inside of us, when in the peak of our nothingness, of being just blood and muscle and appendage aplenty, something yet to be discovered curdles abirth. The blot, not to be touched, just before our ribs, of what we know cannot be our heart as it still pumps and beats traitorously, forms hot and slubs all that surrounds it. The burn is imminent; the pain unfounded. Parasitic but isolated. Sugawara feels it fill his bones. 

There’s a text message, from earlier in the day. It’s from Ushijima to Oikawa.

_I need you._

It reads.

He clicks the screen off. The phone, in such an instant, feels heavier in his hand. That sudden knot in his chest isn’t giving him much time to decide how to react without the heat crawling up his shoulders and stiffening his bones. He looks around, hand stil outstretched with the phone in his grasp, looks at the other bystanders to his implosion and hopes they haven’t noticed how he’s coming undone.

He’s overreacting, surely. The knot inside says otherwise. It burrows. Corrodes.

The phone buzzes— a message— from Oikawa. He clicks it open.

_You always do._

He reads it. Looks up. Looks out the window, blinking, fluttering. Reads it all again. 

_I need you._

Ushijima—?

_You always do._

But Oikawa.

Oh. 

He tries to see the origin. He swipes up on the chat but the scroll is short. There’s only one message to and one from, both texts ambiguous yet intimate (!), one predatory and the other biting back with familial (?) ease. 

It’s a little too late to look inconspicuous by the time he catches Ushijima returning to his seat. The phone is still in his hand when they lock eyes. He clicks the screen back off. Eyes flicker from Sugawara’s grasp to gaze. 

“Um— Oikawa—” Sugawara loosens his grip on the phone. “He- I think he called—”

“Did you answer?” He towers over.

Sugawara feels his breath catch, wit escape. “Well, I…” He shakes his head, scuffing a laugh. Why does he look at him like that? “Ushijima… what is—”

“Why did you answer?” 

Sugawara’s eyes widen. Ushijima snatches the phone.

He stands there with a face not understood nor seen before, Sugawara below him. Eyebrows clenched and jaw too tight for comfort. The phone creaks from the grip in his hand. Sugawara couldn’t understand why the hurt shown in his eyes mirrors his own, and why despite little done on his part, Sugawara feels guilt for being such a fool. 

Ushijima, in his quiet rage, holds him down with his eyes. _Don’t._

Sugawara will realize, later, when he’s buried this pinprick of a moment far within him, that the most emotion Ushijima has ever shown him is when he’s angry with him. 

He notes much too late that Ushijima has stepped away, now smaller. He’s out of the reckoning and further into this opaque boundary that Sugawara wasn’t allowed to touch; hadn’t seen until he opened a door to this new room made to keep him out. Ushijima had secrets, a fact that he always would find to be an oxymoron now proven to be a rule of law for all. No exceptions.

Ushijima scrubs through his hair and Sugawara begins to recognize him less and less. Don’t panic. Don’t overthink. This isn’t what—

He walks away, out the door. Sugawara’s eyes begin to water as he watches his back through the window.

There are things he’ll never admit aloud, as he doesn’t have the words to give full form of what he sees in Sugawara. Sometimes he will sigh, a wrung-wired smile keeping his cheeks warm and will tip his head to the side like he’s dealt his last breath. Out on a high note. 

There are other things he cannot admit aloud, things he won’t permit himself due to the minimal pride still left from legacied wooden floors in a family house (not home) full of silver spoons and upturned noses, but mostly due to the fact that Ushijima has been bred and programmed with no room for failure. 

Today runs rampant on both of those things. 

He shouldn’t have left. The sun’s hot on his neck as he scrolls through the phone now slipping in his sweaty grasp. He notices Oikawa’s new message has been opened, but he shouldn’t have left, and he hits dial anyways yet his hands are shaking but that’s only because he’s pacing which is also conveniently why his palms are slick and why his pulse bellows in his ears. The call rings. He shouldn’t have left. He shouldn’t have left—

“Hello—?”

“Why did you call?” 

Oikawa huffs over the line, reloading for retort but Ushijima is of another color at the moment and much too unminded for explanation. “Why would you do this?”

“You texted _me_ —”

“But he saw.” A woman flinches at the tone in her attempt to pass by, scuffing a step and chancing a glance at the man bowed before her. Such a large man, yet curling in. Ushijima was feeling things slip beneath him before the seconds could be counted. This was a trick knife that had suddenly forgotten to close in— blade now embedded deep in him when he had braced for no pain, when he bore no care for the idea of fear. 

With grace but ingratitude, Oikawa still sounds through calmingly from the other side of the phone. “What did he see, Ushijima?”

“The messages. He saw them.” He’s stopped his pacing without his consent. “He picked up the phone. What did you say to him?”

“He didn’t answer…”

“What did you say?”

“He didn’t answer! It went to voicemail.” A sigh rings in his ears, too tired for the both of them. “Ushijima, what’s going on?”

In a rarity, Ushijima finds himself searching for a response. He’s not sure what to do, and it’s a feeling he’s only known as a phenomenon. Yet, the curdling that has plagued him for weeks threatens to spoil through his skin. 

The silence is too much of a waste for Oikawa. Ushijima will thank him for his sobriety in this moment sometime down the line, but there are things that must be said before it’s too late. 

“Are you sure you want to do this?” 

Ushijima holds his breath on the sidewalk.

“Ushijima—”

“I do,” he says.

There’s a pause. “Okay.”

“I do,” It’s not a conviction; not a confirmation to either of them, in the least to Ushijima, but instead a lost piece that suddenly found itself on the edges of his teeth. He sighed, breathing again, tremor gone. 

“I’m sorry.” Ushijima sighs, combs a hand past his hair. The sun stings at his eyes as he looks up but the force that squeezes his chest is gone. “I’m… I’m still not sure how to do this.”

Oikawa gives a small hum. “It’s okay.” There’s softness found in their shared silence. Staticked echoes nurture Ushijima through the cell in his hands. “Where are you now?”

“I’m still at the cafe.” Ushijima looks behind him, to the glaring windows, to the door. “Outside.”

“Wait,” The sharp change tilts Ushijima’s head. “Where is Sugawara?”

“Inside. I left him.”

“You _left—_ ” Oikawa blutters to a stop, voice much too high too fast and too heated for Ushijima’s ignorance. “Go back. You have to tell him.”

The thundering returns to his chest. “Oikawa—”

“Ushijima,” There’s no room for argument; Ushijima knows that at this tone Oikawa won’t allow for any rebuttal. “It’ll be okay. You’ll be alright. Trust yourself.” 

It’s a strange thing to hear being said to Ushijima, and not something meant to be dwelled too long on as the call clicks to an end. He turns, much too foreignly unsure, door seeming much too far away, yet suffering the walk anyways. 

The bells chime above the door on his entrance and he glances along the windows to their table. He falls back on his heels, still as stone. The door sways shut. 

Their cups, half full, have disappeared. There’s not a crumb nor a plate, but a wet streak from cloth along the table surface dries in the sun. All that remains are two empty chairs and Ushijima. 

He doesn’t know how, but somehow he’s sitting back on this bed. 

He remembers the bell of the shop, the way air wouldn’t return to his lungs every time he exhaled and the announcements on the train and blurred pastels passing through the windows but can’t remember how his legs brought him here. 

He should’ve gone to his own apartment, but he rubs the sheets between his fingers anyways. He looks at the unmade bed and holds down a laugh at the base of his throat. Ushijima was off from the moment he felt those fingers in his hair this morning. 

It was not too early for either of them, but much too late for Ushijima to still be next to him in bed. There was a routine to follow, no matter the occasion, and it had been broken in the eyes of the sun that warmed his ears. He’d felt his forehead nudge his own, and opened his eyes to meet a gaze that, with embraced defeat, left his ribs sore.

He rubs his chest, that soreness back. This time, unwelcome. 

Sugawara, despite appearances, had always been the one to make the first move and did so with a kiss. Ushijima cooperated, just barely. He smiled back nonetheless. 

There’s an unmade mess before him now. He was surprised to return and see that Ushijima hadn’t straightened the fabrics after their tussle and breakfast before they left. There was time— always time— to maintain routine. Yet today, it had been broken, and in Sugawara’s own selfishness, he did not dare to glance upon the hints left in his wake. 

He didn’t think too much about how Ushijima had asked him in a handful of days prior to this one if he was sure this was all he wanted to do today. They would only go to the supermarket then a small cafe he’d passed too many times on the way home to not wander into on a day off, but time and time again Sugawara had held his ground. 

“I’m sure,” and he was, because what he’d never admit is in the space between them, never was there allowed to be a mention of reality. Sugawara knew he’d never be able to hold Ushijima’s hand, neither in the street nor before their own separate sets of four walls. Although they’d never discussed it— and Sugawara wouldn’t risk it, in his own fear to lose that look Ushijima would only spare for him— he couldn’t say to his friends or families that he even spoke to Ushijima Wakatoshi.

No, they would only know or come to find that he would never have children nor settle down, “too dedicated to his job,” as his mother would scuttle to their relatives (and hope but already know not), but was an avid fan of the national volleyball team. 

But for once, as it came to him over time and with a plan one night, he wanted to be able to see Ushijima in public. Yes, as he had seen him many times before and would time and time again, but from up close. He wanted to watch the way the muscles in the small of his back would dance as he twisted for something on the shelf. If he wanted to show him something on his phone, he’d have to quirk an eyebrow and lean close, shadow soft on his brow, nose near his nose, breath on his fingers. They’d balance bags between the two of them and sway on the train car in silence, arms just slightly brushing, arm rails swinging together. In two, in harmony, in complement.

He wanted to see Ushijima next to him, and in all held selfishness, he wanted passersby to see the man who walked beside Ushijima.

Perhaps he was a fool, Sugawara thinks. No, correction. Omit the past tense. An affirmation of his continued folly; he is, despite his anger and confusion in the moment, still very much in denial. Full of conceit, he thought Ushijima wouldn’t know how to love another person. Never even considered there’d be theft from a third party.

Although he hadn’t fathomed an intrusion, he was always certain of not deserving this love. Sugawara Koushi, primary school teacher, sprite personality but face in the crowd. He was impeding on a legacy. He had snipped the strings in a tapestry still being woven. The certainty in knowing his uncertainty had been accepted, and Sugawara knew his place would not, and was not, always at Ushijima’s side. 

That was the world they were born into, grew up in, lived and would die in. He would break his legs when he finally landed from the fall, but he’d make the jump worth it. 

He sighs, legs creaking in his seat on the bed. 

The door opens in the hall. 

Ushijima has stepped through the room and to his knees before he has time to react. It’s been hours since he left him behind— no; first Ushijima, then Sugawara to follow suit— but it feels like Sugawara is still trying to piece together a response. There’s a daring red streak that cuts across Ushijima’s arm from the sun through the window. His face is sharp, mouth parted. 

“I’ve been calling you.” Sugawara digs his hands further into the sheets.“Why did you leave?”

Sugawara stares at the presence before him. At his heaving chest, the phone still in his hands, a heavy and threatening weapon. Deliverance of downfall. His mouth holds shut. 

“I went to your apartment,” he continues, and Sugawara catches the way his hands clench and unclench at his sides. “You weren’t there. I went back to the cafe to see if you returned. I couldn’t find you. You left me.”

“You left _me!_ ” Sugawara feels his chest swell from his seat. Ushijima leans back on his heels, ready to respond but too hesitant. “You walked out without a word, and I was supposed to sit there and wait for you?”

“I would never leave you.” Sugawara felt his hidden claws dig into his neck. He bit his lip firm to hide the tremor in his chin. “I would have returned.”

He scoffs. “So I have to read your mind, now? Anticipate your every move?”

“That is not what I’m saying—”

“Well, that’s what I’m saying.” He holds a heated gaze to Ushijima’s own, not backing down but pulse driving him to ruin. 

Ushijima pauses, stands straighter. “You’re angry with me.”

Sugawara couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s right.”

“Why?” 

His eyes widen. “Wouldn’t you be?”

Ushijima’s eyebrows jump from their clench state. He’s not sure how to answer something he doesn’t understand. 

“Those messages,” he says, and Ushijima’s hands still in their agitation. “Am I supposed to see something like that and be okay?"

It was then that Ushijima bucks his head and Sugawara feels his heart fold. The shuttering of his face is as close to an admission of guilt, and enough for the man sinking into the bed to feel the full brunt of what he has now confirmed. His throat runs dry, his eyes grow glassy. 

“This is it then?” Sugawara can’t hide the tremor in his voice. 

Ushijima jerks back up. “Why must it be?”

He stares back at him, wavers in his gaze, eyes flicking all over to look through his chest, swatting away a moment of fleeting violence akin to gutted rage that would manifest in broken chairs and shattered glasses. “I won’t be made to make room for someone else, Wakatoshi.”

He can’t make eye contact anymore. “Who—”

“If you thought I would sit around and accept whatever it is you and Oikawa are doing, you really have no—”

“ _Koushi,_ ” His head shoots up, blood draining. “Stop.”

It’s a look that Sugawara can’t piece to this situation but runs a fresh strike down his spine. Like he’s said something he shouldn’t have, set fire to innocent flesh, taken whip to virgin back. He watches a vein that tugs up his neck for he’s suddenly too afraid to reckon with those eyes that cut right through him.

“Come with me.” Ushijima turns and walks out the door. 

Sugawara, again complacent, again not willing in the dark. The sun has continued its descent through the room and soon will leave him searching for whatever’s left in there with him. The body is traitorous to the mind and heart, without fail. Perhaps this is what he wants, a whisper inside of him mocks. He stands, following him.

He hasn’t ventured too far. There’s a strange shiver to his hands as he towers over the table top. Sugawara almost has to look away. It’s an unfathomable anomaly to recognize some, if any, fear that could grip Ushijima so, and yet it trembles all the way through his skin to leave Sugawara in concern despite the anger that brims just beneath. 

Ushijima rests a hand on a chair. “Sit down.”

Sugawara doesn’t move, eyes flicking to the door, then back to those caving shoulders. “No.”

“Please.”

“Why—”

“ _Please._ ” 

Sugawara leans back at the tight strings in his tone before finally stepping to the chair. He’s careful to avoid unbudding muscle, not to notice the strains and lines that pull through that forearm on the back of the chair where he now sits. The shadow above heats him enough. He knows if he leans back just enough he’ll feel the bones of his fingers on the backrest, holding awkwardly forward in knowledge of this.

There’s movement of the shadow. Pressure leaves the chair. Fingers tug at his shirtsleeve, just slightly. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t feel his pulse jump. None of this, not at all. 

Sugawara listens to the rustling behind him. Ushijima, himself, pulling through drawers, in limbo. Too distracted by the tilt of Sugawara’s head and the knot of bone that sits exposed on his neck. He’s been unable to meet those eyes without a storm at their backs. 

He steps back to the table, sitting to the side. Sugawara watches how his hands rest on the table, palms rubbing without rest. It’s too vulnerable to be attached to Ushijima and yet it is another moment of surprise that clenches harder at Sugawara’s ribs in still knowing not enough about the man beside him.

“I had asked Oikawa for help,” he begins, slowly, hands still rubbing. “For something. I wasn’t sure on how to carry this out, as I hadn’t done it before. I feared I would get it wrong.”

Sugawara’s chest hurts. The void is plasmatic, organs burning. His heartbeat is taking up too much space for him to focus.

“I fear that it’s too late.” Those rubbing palms clench together, and Sugawara looks up to find a sharp frown. 

He’s not sure why he’s dragging this out. “What is it?” 

But Ushijima just frowns harder. Sugawara, in typical fashion, fears more for the worst. 

“Can’t you just tell me?” He pleads. “Are you and Oikawa—?” 

Sugawara chokes, throat tightening. In hearing his warbled tone, Ushijima jerks his gaze on him.

“Why are you crying?” 

He hadn’t realized his face was wet, but the brunt response only makes him crumble more. How typical, Sugawara. So emotional, Sugawara. An easy out at death’s door. 

“Because, I—” He struggles through the breaths burning his lungs. “I don’t know why you would do this.”

Ushijima furrows his eyebrows. His hands have come dangerously close to Sugawara’s own fists. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“God, _Ushijima_.” Sugawara curls further in.

Ushijima, leaning closer, feels the strike of realization. The messages, the quiet inaptitude mistaken for refusal to provide answers. His irrational anger at the cafe in the face of possible discovery, cracked open before the only person who held him in their palms. He was such a fool.

"There's been a misunderstanding." Shadows close and meld on the wood. He grabs Sugawara's hands before he could snatch them away. "I'm not with Oikawa."

Sugawara jerks up.

Ushijima locks with him steady. It’s unfailing, that gaze, the one he showed when he told him he first loved him, the one that would leave his mouth dry, heart spread open. The void burns, nonetheless, but the ache changes color. 

“I have never… considered anyone, but you. Koushi.” Ushijima looks down at their hands, searching. “Have you always thought that I-”

“No.” Sugawara flattens his palms on the table, leaning forward. His voice seems almost breathless. “Not until I saw the messages. I felt so stupid because I thought I should’ve known something. I should’ve seen something.” He tries to take a breath but his lungs still stutter in his hysteria. “I would never think...that you would, with someone else…”

“I wouldn’t.” Ushijima says. “I won’t.”

He sees those eyes to the end and nods. It takes a few tugs on his hands to free them so Sugawara can wipe his face only for his cheeks to be a crowd of fingers, soft and thicker threading through his own as Ushijima brushes at his eyes. 

The fingers disappear. He hears a shuffling on the chair. “Koushi.”

He looks up.

“I love you.”

Sugawara bites at the tremble in his lips. 

Ushijima, lids creasing just slightly. The knot, in the middle of his chest, fills. 

“Do you love me?”

Sugawara chances a small smile. “Yes. Always.”

Broad chest deflates, just enough, before he reaches forward. “Give me your hand.”

It’s a movement meant for memory. Not the now, when Sugawara is more inside than out, when his hand complies before his mind can catch thought, as something solid but small slips between the lines from one palm to the other. It’s warmer than hot, and would probably be a size too small on his finger, but it gleams in its chrome regardless.

It’s a ring.

Ah, Sugawara thinks. The knot is gone.

“I’m sorry for ruining your birthday,” Ushijima holds his palm in his grip. His hands are sweaty and Sugawara laughs at that but more at the fact that he’d half forgotten what today was at all after the commotion he’d built all by himself.

“It’s okay. You did your best.” Sugawara chances a shy smile at Ushijima’s responding frown, but brings their hands to kiss at his fingers. Oh, Ushijima, you dolt of pomp and circumstance. It’s tradition in the state of taboo, and he succeeds in the failure to give his all. Sugawara didn’t think it possible to love this man anymore. He feels he might die, right then and there. He might be okay with that. 

He sighs, forehead resting on clasped knuckles. “Yes.”

Ushijima sighs quietly. The lines on his face dissipate. 

“You’re crying again.”

Sugawara sniffs. “Shut up.”

“We’ll have to figure out when our schedules match. To have it officialized.”

“Hm.” His ears redden at the words, but he’s mostly gone to the world. 

“Perhaps we can have it done during one of my matches abroad. As for the lease on your apartment, it’d be best—”

But Ushijima is halted by a soft touch to his cheek and lips on his own. It’s a breath of skin that had been unknowingly missed all this time. To think this would be an instance in perpetuity. Sugawara wants to laugh again, and more, and forever. The details are in his fingers, in the nails that catch on thick hair and scratch just enough at his scalp. The head that tilts back, shoulders to his, eyelashes tickling his own. Theirs, _theirs_ , theirs, in pattern, in dance. Motion, endless, til death, and further.

**Author's Note:**

> This comes....many months....late.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
